I spent the past two weekends
scrubbing baseboards and repainting
after too many years of trying to ignore
dings and scrapes and marks,

not to mention the damage
caused those couple of winters
years ago when we let the kids ride their
big wheels in the house,

because big wheels were fun
and a great way to burn off
inexhaustible excess energy when
it was too cold and gross outside

or I just didn’t have the energy to go
through the exercise of requiring outdoor play
and dealing with the resulting pile of
wet winter clothes that would generate.

So there were days and evenings filled with
the laughter of two boys riding big wheels
around the kitchen table, racing, scratching
up the floor, chipping baseboards.

Boys now more calm and mostly grown,
no more racing about the house
and I relish the quieter days and evenings,
while glad we welcomed indoor racing and

kitchen sink bubble-making,
and all the other shenanigans we allowed
because messes can be cleared away
and baseboards can be repainted, eventually.

The immensity of love,
frustrations, crises, joy.
The way such experiences
can coexist within
a lifetime,
a person,
a moment,
is
a wonder,
a story,
a lament.

Exhilaration,
devastation,
restoration,
intertwine and
sometimes
you aren’t okay,
sometimes
you just breathe.

Far too many are deluded into thinking
what ails society is other people’s
bodies, abilities, questions, insights,
ways of being,
if those differ from the accepted reality
they’ve acquired from

bad interpretations of their sacred texts,
harmful narratives grounded in domination,
manipulations of power-hungry
pundits,
pastors,
politicians,
public figures.

Walking around
believing self-determination
when what they have is simply compliance
to conditions determined by others,
falsehoods masquerading as freedom.

Convinced those simply moving to
live authentically,
share understanding,
advocate for equity,
impart hard-won knowledge,
are pushing a destructive agenda

when they are the ones with an agenda
to withhold access,
to exclude,
to silence,
to control,
to harm.

So sure that someone
else existing as their true self,
with needs met,
with celebration,
with support,
threatens their existence
that they want the other
to stop existing.

Imaginations impoverished,
unable to understand,
it is their own prison
into which they are wishing
to confine the world.

Terrified seeing those
living in the clear light of true freedom for all,
threatened by radical reimagining,
unable or unwilling to believe
in compassion,
in spaciousness,
in love
that could also be theirs
if they freed themselves
as well.

Some scars are visible at a glance,
like the one that misshapes
my right eyebrow,
acquired playing tag as a kid
too close to the side mirror
of my dad’s parked Oldsmobile.

Many scars, perhaps even most,
can only be seen by the reverberations
of their aftermath, how they shape
reactions and responses,

how they cause
fight or
flee or
freeze or
fawn,
cause to believe one must
choose between one self-betrayal
or another.

Too many of us think
we have to see,
to understand the cause
in order to accept,
to accommodate what a person needs,
to affirm validity of healing,

as though we must agree
with someone’s navigation
of their own experience before
we deem them worthy.

When truth is there are experiences
we will never understand
because we do not bear those scars,
inhabit that body,
live that life.

Love says we don’t have to understand,
to endure the same wounds
to experience the same challenges,
in order to believe someone’s truth,
to welcome them as they are.

We’re told there will be
wars and rumors of wars
and some people look forward
to this possibility,

perhaps opportunistically,
perhaps sadistically,
perhaps from a sense
of pride or heroism.

We’re told it’s naive
to dream that causes
of war, of destruction,
could be addressed,

that power could be shared,
that systems could be changed,
that things don’t have to stay
the way things have been made.

We’re told trying something different
would be a disaster because
some different things have
gone wrong in the past,

as though the way things are
now hasn’t been
going wrong for
a very long time.

We’re told this is how
it must be, as though
people didn’t lead us
here on purpose

with domination,
exploitation,
division,
greed.

Perhaps it’s time to question why
we limit what we accept
as possible to such a narrow
range of options.

Perhaps it’s time to stop
listening to what we’re told
and start living into new
possibilities together.

No new poem this week, because I spent all my writing time this weekend working on finalizing the publishing of my book!

Heresy and Other Prayers: Poems and Pictures is now up on Blurb and will soon be available from other retailers. A huge thank you to all my friends and readers who have followed along on my writing journey, and to my family for understanding why I disappear for several hours a week to write.

Until now, I was never certain this book was actually going to happen. It took months to choose which poems and which pictures to include, and then even more time to find and hire a copy editor, wait for the editing, and format the edited copy. I wavered multiple times, wondering who I thought I was to self-publish a book and more than once found myself caught up in feelings of it not being a “real” book because there was no book deal or formal approval involved. And all of this while experiencing multiple life upheavals, including finding and starting a new job in a completely different industry.

But, here we are.

I’m grateful for all the writers, artists, musicians, and makers whose commitment to sharing their work helped me remember the importance of our creative pursuits and for everyone who encouraged me and expressed their enthusiasm for being able to read my work in book form.

Lastly, I will always be indebted to Audre Lorde. It was reading her essay “Poetry is Not a Luxury” that helped me embrace the power of poems and my desire to write and share them.

“But there are no new ideas still waiting in the wings to save us as women, as human. There are only old and forgotten ones, new combinations, extrapolations and recognitions from within ourselves, along with the renewed courage to try them out. And we must constantly encourage ourselves and each other to attempt the heretical actions our dreams imply and some of our old ideas disparage. In the forefront of our move toward change, there is only our poetry to hint at possibility made real.”
– Audre Lorde

Gray silhouettes
extend at angles
across fresh
snowfall.

Winter branches,
awareness seemingly
unchanged despite their
shadows cast by moonlight
instead of sun.

But trees know the moon’s
silvery light contains
a magic echo,
a beckoning to wonder,
a depth of imagination
obscured in bright of day.

Their knowing draws me
into the frozen night,
frosty air filling lungs,
changed somehow by adding
my own moon shadow
next to theirs.

Pedestals are
no place for humans,
fumbling, fallible, fickle,
as we are.

Yes, even
your beloved grandparent,
your political party figurehead,
your religious leader,
that motivational speaker
you adore.

Pedestals can
obscure important truths,
conceal harmful patterns,
mask wayward motivations.

No one deserves
our uncritical support,
our unexamined esteem,
our unchecked admiration,
our unfettered loyalty.

Oh, the devastating
consequences
of hero-worship,
of following blindly
where another leads.

Keep showing up for work,
at school events
and the supermarket.
Keep acting like the world isn’t
fraying around the edges,
unraveling,
coming apart
in so many ways.

Make sure to put on a normal face,
because that is the expectation.

Don’t let it show that
pandemic waves and
unsustainable practices and
societal demands and
personal crises
might be getting to you,
freezing your once-easy grins
into worried eyes
and forced half-smiles.

Unless.

Unless we stop pretending,
stop letting status quo demands
keep us frozen in place
and admit that things
need to change.

Unless we make it okay
to say things like
“We’re not okay” and
“This is hard”
and work together
to find a different
way forward.

We are told not to live in the past,
or dwell on what has been,
yet our lives ebb and flow and some wisdom
is gleaned only in hindsight.

Memories, waves veining across sand
in the rose-golden light of retrospection
beckon us, carry us, navigate back to
gather in the previously unobserved.

Wandering revealed as labyrinth path,
the trivial unveiled as meaningful,
former aches and longings
rediscovered as deepest truth.

Time offers perspective, not forgiveness.
Perspective offers understanding,
shows the way to forgive ourselves
for what we didn’t know.